DEGS March 2023 Match Results

The first match of the 2023 shooting season is behind us and what a pleasure it was to see a good turnout. We test ran a new weather call option. We were setting the following weekend in reserve if we had a rainout. Tony Simonetti agreed to be the Weatherman and make the call early the day of the match at 5:00 am. Thank you Tony. Lots of pressure with that job! He contacted me and said we looked good and I sent out an email alert at 5:30 am to all the membership to let them know the match was a go. Let us know what you thought of that idea. We had a slight short drizzle but the match came off without a hitch. Now to report on to the best part of the day!

Most of you know that at our end of year banquet I let the rifle drawing go awry. I'll spare the details but the end result was that Chris Hymen, through no fault of his own, was given and unfair advantage at the end of the drawing. My blunder let Kim Morey have a win snatched from her. That was totally on me and my poor suggestion of how to resolve this issue. Anyway, Kim Morey was set to be the raffle winner and it went Chris's way. The first act of sportsmanship was Chris immediately saying that we should draw over at the first match of the season. Thank you Chris! I owe you some consolation prize ammo my friend!

As we were resolving the match snafu at the banquet Tom Wareham later suggested to me that because a few people had won multiple rifles, wouldn't it be cool if a winning member who had previously won a rifle voluntarily gave it to someone who had never won a rifle. He said if he won this year he would pass it along to a member who had not received one in the past. Yet another sportsman like suggestion. Well Tom didn't win but apparently the idea set a spark.

The rifle re-drawing occured this past Saturday and low and behold Jason Cisarano, a previous winner of two Garands, was the winner, Tony Simonetti who had never won a rifle previously, was the second to last member standing in the drawing. Jason decided that he wanted to let Tony have the rifle. After some haggling Tony reluctantly accepted. Thank you Jason for your act of Sportsmanship! Shortly, after the match Tony came to Jason and I and said, you know, Kim Morey should have ended up with this rifle at the banquet. Even though he had never won one of our rifles Tony decided that he wanted Kim to have the rifle. At days end we asked Kim to come over and presented her the 2022 Season Garand. She was thrilled. Our header picture from left to right includes: Tony Simonetti, A smiling Kim Morey, Chris Hymen and Jason Cisarano! What a great group of folks!

I can never begin to say enough about the caliber (no pun intended) of the character of the members of this club and beyond that, the many folks who are involved in the shooting sports. To bad the rest of our nation doesn't get to experience the way 99.9 % of firearms enthusiast behave. I count it as an honor to be associated with each of you. Thanks for giving my banquet blunder a very great ending!

On to the regular busines of this email. Here's the match results for this March. For the full match standings please visit our website at downeastgarand.org In the GSM divison Joe McMillan took gold with his M1 rifle shooting a 279-7X. Jonatham Greene took the silver by shooting a 214-1X. In the Modern Military division Mathew Mathwig garnered the gold with a 272-7X while Robert Lemke claimed Silver with his 257-5x. The Unlimited Modern Military division was lead by Jason Cisarano who shot a very impressive 292-15X. This old dog, Mark Valletta, limped in behind Jason with a 279-13X to claim a silver pin and Dennis Morey was right on my heels shooting a 268-6X to claim a bronze match pin. It was great seeing everyone and I hope we can see a lot more of the members who have been awasy since Covid thinned our ranks. Get those taxes done and out of the way as our next match is on April 15th! We will send a reminder the week before that match and hope many of you will attend.